Brrrr…it’s chilly! It’s a good time to find your cutest fuzzy socks and your favorite mug filled with hot chocolate and warm up. In fact, after you take a few sips, you might try warming up by simplifying the world around you. It’s the perfect time to think about losing a little weight, you know the weights of anxiety and frosty memories and closets that need to be trimmed. Run some laps around the way you look at things and get a grip on what you can quickly change.

Take the first lap around your environment. What can you do to lighten the load, or bring some light to the place where you hang your hat? What about starting with that closet door you hate to open? You know the one, it’s hiding the college sweaters, the party dresses from a decade ago, the velour running suit you never ran in. Let go of those things. Call it an exercise of love. Give a blast of fresh air to Good Will and take a deep breath. Golly, you’re getting lighter already.

Next, look in the pantry and pull out those boxes and cans of things that are never going to become tonight’s dinner and send them to the food bank. Yes, it was a great deal when you got a case of creamed corn for next to nothing at the wholesale club, but are you really going to eat all that? The local food bank or homeless shelter will love you if you stop by and donate things. Bend down, hoist a few cans out of those shelves, stand up and repeat! The pounds are just melting away. You’re looking absolutely fabulous!

Okay, you’ve cleaned out your closets and you’ve fed the community, so what else can you do to lighten your load? Maybe it’s time to take a quick inventory of all the stuff you carry around in your head that no longer serves you. Let go of old conversations that sting your heart whenever your mind wanders back passed them. Forgive yourself already and move on. Make a clean break with the past. Give yourself the present of today. Today is never too heavy and it fits just right. Remember your dreams? You still have a chance to make them come true.

Opportunities for simplifying things are endless. Book shelves can be cleared, the junk drawer can be cleaned, and the space where you’ve packaged up and saved your old hurts and slights can be tossed out. Once you’ve cleared space you have room for new and loving experiences to come in. You can run faster, more efficiently, and more joyfully.

With these winter warm ups exercises, you’ll be ready for the best and most comfortable moments of joy that today can bring. In fact, you’ll be warm and toasty even when you’re not wearing your cutest fuzzy socks.